[Disclaimer] My sincerest apologies for the lateness of this article, some unfortunate things came up recently. As a result, most of this post was not written by myself so please do not give me any credit. Instead direct your thanks towards DJEtterStyle, GrandInquisitor and everyone who voted in the OSL awards!

Prelude- By DJEtterStyleI haven't followed professional Starcraft in a long time. I make my picks in Liquibet more out of habit than genuine interest, and I only take the time to review the results of the most important matches. On the rare occasion when I watch a game on YouTube, I tend to fast forward the moment the action slows or the outcome is, in my mind, decided.

So I was confused when Hot_Bid asked me to write the news post for the OSL finals. Surely, I thought, there had to be someone more qualified, someone who could expound upon the voyage each player had taken through the tournament. The struggle to merely get there, I thought -- that's what the finals are all about.

This struggle is something of which I have precious little knowledge. I know Stork took down Bisu and Best. I know Fantasy managed to outwit Mind and GGPlay. But that's all I know. I don't know what happened in the Round of 16, much less the Round of 32, and if you were to ask me to name the four maps used during this OSL off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you more than two. Back when I actively followed Starcraft, Fantasy was just another mediocre, amateur Terran. What the hell was he doing in an OSL final?

But the beauty of this matchup lies below its surface. The finals between Stork and Fantasy are about more than two players and a handful of wins. This matchup transcends any single tournament. It's a story as old as sport itself: the fated, young upstart vs. the consistent, mature veteran. Every athlete is all too aware that you only get so many chances before your time is up.

Stork has already had three chances. He's lost to each of the three races in three Starleague finals: Bisu's Protoss, Jaedong's Zerg, and Flash's Terran. Along with Yellow, Stork is the most accomplished player in the game today without a major title. Will he again have to settle for a silver-coated defeat?

In Starcraft, youth has always held the advantage over experience. That statement isn't conjecture. It's simple history. Reach dethroned Boxer, Xellos trounced Yellow, Ra wrecked Nada, Kingdom wasted Ra, July and Savior overpowered Reach, Anytime topped Boxer, Casy crushed Chojja, Bisu wasted Savior, Mind destroyed Bisu, Jaedong dismantled Stork, and ForGG leveled Jaedong. Starcraft is about meteoric rises to the top of the heap, about being an unstoppable whirlwind for the duration of a tournament. The up-and-comer has always held the advantage. Situations in which a veteran staved off a young, hungry, first-time competitor in the Starleague finals are few and far between.

It was with great trepidation that I watched the games of the Incruit OSL finals. No one deserved the title more than Stork, but despite his unmatched PvT, I was left doubting his chances. History was against him, both his own and Starcraft's. Fantasy was walking the royal road to ultimate victory, and he was walking it with style and confidence. If Stork lost this series, would he ever reach the finals again? Was this Stork's last chance? I pressed the "play" button on my laptop and tried to discern the emotions running through the minds of each player behind their masks of concentration.

Perhaps if fantasy read TeamLiquid, he would not have lost this game. The game couldn’t have started better for him – his scouting scv sees no probe coming, and combined with the fact that this is a 2-player map, and it’s game 1 of a series, fantasy puts two and two and two together and discovers Stork’s proxy gate off to the side of his natural. He immediately sends four SCV’s, and then places a barracks…

…in total violation of skyglow’s excellent guide on deflecting zealot harass with marines. Worse yet, Stork shows just how much he’s been practicing by immediately sealing off his pylon/gateway with a perfectly placed second gate, protecting his buildings from fantasy’s SCV’s. (In a post-match interview Stork credits Much with this build and helping him practice it.)

This is the sort of thing, I suppose, worth sacrificing a Ro8 MSL PvP for.

At this point, fantasy would have probably been better off sending his four SCV’s back to work, considering they represented a third of his mining capacity, and Stork would have to cancel the blocking gateway anyway to get his zealots out. But instead, he attacks the blocking gateway with all five SCV’s – and then doesn’t even attack the pylon anyway after he “forces” a cancel, choosing to send his SCV’s back to mining as if nothing happened. This essentially cripples his own economy for no good reason, and by the time Stork’s first zealot gets into fantasy’s base, Stork has equaled the supply count, a second pylon up, gas warping – while fantasy just finished his first barracks, and only now starting his second. Oops.

These gentlemen are not pleased

Stork harasses the SCV building fantasy’s second barracks, forcing fantasy to hurt his economy even more by pulling more SCV’s to help fight. And between trying to finish the second barracks and starting a second supply depot, fantasy chokes – without good building placement in which to hide his marines, he mismicroes them on several occasions, losing too many marines to zealots, while never getting around to building a bunker or even keeping up SCV production.

This SKT Terran knows a thing or two about choking

Fantasy can’t get rid of the zealots in his base for a full two minutes, and by the time he does, his base looks something like this

Those are all of fantasy's units

By which time Stork has almost three times his supply, a cybernetics core, a second gate, and the balls to do this:

For reference, that is as many probes as fantasy has marines and workers combined at that point.

This is about as far as fantasy got out of his base during the entire game

The dragoon and probes finish fantasy off, and he types out. A visibly relieved Stork leans back in triumph, having put an emphatic exclamation mark on his game 1 victory. And this is why you read the TeamLiquid Recommended Threads before playing your first OSL final.

Coming into the finals, the big question was, “Would Stork choke?”, or, if you’re Hot_Bid, “How much would Stork choke?”, with surprisingly little attention paid to fantasy's state of mind. After all, it is his first OSL final - and now, Royal Road or not, he just got humiliated in a game lasting barely five minutes. Stork spawns at 2’o’clock, while fantasy spawns at 6. Stork opens with a zealot->core->goon->range build, and harasses fantasy, but fantasy deflects with marines and SCV’s and Stork retreats before the tank pops. Stork allows fantasy’s SCV to scout the robotics warping in his main, but secretly proxies a citadel at the 1’o’clock gas expansion.

Fantasy expands, and Stork positions his dragoons in front of his natural choke to feint an expansion of his own. But fantasy’s SCV scout gets far enough into the choke to realize Stork hasn’t expanded yet, and he immediately moves out towards Stork’s base with marines, tanks, and mine-upgraded vultures.

Stork is forced to use his shuttle and freshly-spawned pair of DT’s to push back fantasy’s army, allowing fantasy to finish the turret in his main just as Stork’s slightly-delayed DT drop arrives. Stork slices away at fantasy’s depots, and fantasy tries to lay mines around the DT’s, but…

fantasy: But coach! You said mines were the counter to DT! Oov: "Uhh..."

With absolutely sublime DT/shuttle micro, Stork sets off the mines without losing a single DT, enabling him to kill the second depot, then moves to the cliff behind fantasy’s main and kills another depot. Before he leaves, he rubs it in a little more by setting off another mine to kill three vultures – again, without his DT taking damage.

At this point, fantasy’s scans are finally up, but the damage has been done. When the shuttle flew into fantasy’s main, fantasy’s supply was 45/60, and Stork’s was 46/57. By the time it was over, having lost three depots, fantasy was at 53/76 – and Stork was at 64/74 and had double-expanded.

Even Grrrr... is shocked.

Fantasy moves out immediately, and targets the neutral building leading to Stork’s rear cliff. Stork cleverly preemptively seals off the entrance to his rear base with pylons, and by the time fantasy can get up the ramp the vultures have nowhere to go. He camps at the ramp, seemingly unsure of what to do, and Stork is content to wait patiently and allow his economic advantage to build. By the time Stork finally moves to break fantasy’s push, he’s nearly doubled his supply advantage, and the outcome of the battle is never really in doubt:

Fantasy tries in vain to reinforce, but he can sense the inevitability. With only five factories to Stork’s eight gateways, Stork’s units are being replenished faster than his, and there’s no way fantasy can maintain any semblance of map control. Subsequent vulture harass is ineffective, and fantasy ends up just camping at his natural for the rest of the game, as Stork techs to arbiter, expands, and tries some cute harass:

And some not-so-effective harass:

But it all hardly matters at this point. Eventually fantasy ineffectively tries to move out, clumps all his tanks together, and gets torn apart by Stork’s massive army.

Give credit where credit is due – for a player down 0-2 in his first OSL final, fantasy played surprisingly well. Stork opens reaver, which, unluckily for him, turns out to be what fantasy had been reportedly practicing almost every day against – and who can blame him, after watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blMeBywzb50］this during the semifinals? Plus, according to the post-match interview with Stork, fantasy is especially practicing with IntoTheRainbow, no reaverslouch himself. And it shows:

Stork’s hopes of a 3-0 going boom

Fantasy easily deflects the reaver harass, losing no units and killing the reaver – a critical difference, since it allows him to move out freely without the threat of being harassed. He sets up on the high ground outside Stork’s natural and bunkers/turrets up. Seemingly in disbelief, Stork continues to make reavers and attempt ineffectual harass, and tries to cut off reinforcements to the contain, and even at one point clears out most of fantasy’s army:

Unfortunately, with the two players on equal base counts, and Stork’s reaver harass having failed completely, fantasy’s reinforcements are quickly too much to handle, and he pulls out every trick in the TvP Lame Contain playbook, with the turrets, the mines, the high ground, the unflankable cliff, the floating buildings, etc. and starts whaling on Stork’s natural nexus.

fantasy never really takes a third, but it’s okay, since Stork never does either. Without a third base, the wars of attrition quickly takes its toll on Stork. He tries some last-ditch harass, but they are easily cleaned up, and when fantasy moves in for the kill Stork types out.

Stork starts the game looking rattled; game 3 did not go the way he had planned. Nor would game 4. Stork opens 14 nexus, but unbeknownst to him, after walling off the probe scout, fantasy has gone for a two factory vulture build, and makes full use of the old NaDa-cheat-the-units-over-with-a-floating-barracks trick.

Shy vulture is hiding

fantasy pops a vulture into Stork’s sector of the map, forcing all of Stork’s natural probes to flee back to the main.

Ghost town…

A single zealot stands on the ramp to block the vulture from coming in.

Stork at this point has to realize something is up, since fantasy has no expansion anywhere around his main. He starts teching to reaver, but the old TvP rule still stands – a Terran drop build will arrive sooner than a Protoss drop build – especially in this case when Protoss 14 nexused and has nothing to show for it. And so Stork sends some of his probes back to his expansion once his dragoon finishes. Unfortunately fantasy’s vulture is still circling around [like a vulture, ba-dum-psh], and it snipes some probes, slowing Stork down further. And right around this time, fantasy’s dropship finishes and airlifts four vultures into Stork’s main base, where they face only a dragoon and zealot.

With some well-placed mines (including one in front of Stork’s robotics that will later cripple Stork’s reaver), fantasy kills Stork’s forces and lays waste to his probes, as the dropship returns and ferries four more vultures into Stork’s natural just before Stork’s cannon there finishes. Stork tries to defend with a dragoon and reaver in a shuttle, but the dropship comes back with two tanks and a wraith, which easily defeat the half-health reaver.

No amount of reaver micro will save you now.

Left with more bases than units, Stork GG’s. fantasy put on a clinic – a smart, opportunistic build against the greedy macro builds by Protoss on this map coupled with a complete denial of scouting meant that Stork had no real chance: fantasy was in total control of the entire game.

And so we come to game 5 – back to the first map, but now Stork with the Stork face firmly plastered on his visage, and fantasy with all the momentum. Everyone’s expecting the choke now. An armada of TeamLiquid posters readies their “silver” jokes.

But during the break between games four and five, Stork gets a chance to talk to his team, and his coach. And when game 5 starts, Stork immediately shows a return to the Stork of ProLeague and the Stork of group stages and quarterfinals – a Stork of relentless practice and rock-solid builds. Spawning at the top base, he sends out an unusually early scouting probe – not to proxy, but to threaten a proxy. As a result, fantasy is forced to lay his barracks immediately – upon which Stork immediately steals fantasy’s gas.

Fantasy's factory is thus so delayed that he has no choice but to fast expand behind a handful of marines and a bunker, as Stork transitions into a one gate range expo build. With his first three goons, Stork is able to pound away on the bunker, and in a critical micro mistake by fantasy, even able to snipe the first tank.

Stork double expands, and walls off his third from both sides with pylon walls, deflecting fantasy’s vulture harass.

fantasy, I played with Boxer: I knew Boxer; Boxer was a friend of mine. fantasy, you're no SlayerS_`BoxeR`

Finding his harass ineffective, fantasy moves out and sets up in the middle of the map. But he is too passive in pushing out – sitting in the middle of the map for a minute and a half. By this time Stork’s third has been online for a while, zealot speed is complete, and he has eight gateways pumping. The battle isn’t even close.

Looks impressive, but check the supply count…

Fantasy loses the middle, and tries to set up another defensive line. Unfortunately he does it right under the high-ground entrance to his corner, and it, too, falls.

Stork clears out the final defenses with a stylish DT bomb, and moves into the nat for the kill.

Ready to celebrate…

But like a stubborn onion, fantasy has one more layer of defense, and he manages to drive Stork away. Stork tries to force the issue several times before taking the hint and backing off, expanding again. Meanwhile, fantasy’s vultures finally figure out how to break through Stork’s pylon wall at his third and he snipes quite a few probes.

“Ohhh, the trick was to attack the pylon wall! Why didn’t I think of that earlier!”

Meanwhile, fantasy has expanded secretly to the 9’o’clock base, and Stork comes unbelievably close to discovering it on at least three separate occasions – each time missing it by a hair’s breadth. At one point OGN even switches to a first-person view of Stork’s screen, just to see if he had seen the hidden expansion or not – but he never does.

Notice how close this observer is to the hidden base on the minimap…

Stork’s begun to tech to arbiters, but the crowd’s beginning to get restless. Fantasy’s vulture harass, for the first time in this series, has been quite effective throughout, sniping several high templars and a significant number of probes, and his 9’o’clock expansion has noticeably kicked in. He’s turtled and macroed his way back into a fairly substantial army. The Samsung team begins to worry about their champagne.

I wonder if we kept the receipts…

Luckily for them, at this point fantasy chooses to move out. (He probably had little choice anyway, in light of Stork’s imminent arbiter tech.) But he fails to set up his tanks adequately, and Stork punishes him for it.

[

Even he can’t believe it.

And then it comes – the moment for which Stork has waited his entire professional Starcraft career.

Congratulations, Song Byung Goo, our newest OSL Grand Champion.

TeamLiquid Incruit OSL AwardsThe 'Garimto' Award for Player of the Tournament -- Stork

You finally did it Stork! All I can say is that it was a long time coming, and indeed he now holds the prestigious title of most OSLs participated in before winning an OSL. It wasn't handed to him on a silver platter either, to get here he had to fight through the entire A-Team of SKT and a decent group. Stork has proven that nothing worth winning comes without a fight.

Stork: Finally broke through and won a major tournament. Not only that, but he did so in an impressive fashion, 3-0-ing his group, beating Bisu and Best (both of which have very strong PvP), and thwarting Fantasy’s comeback. (the 3 finals games that he won, he won very convincingly)

- tomash6

The 'Mumyung' Award for Worst Player -- Rock

Rock has truly become the neo-mumyung. Rock continually qualifies for the OSL only to go 0-3 every season without fail. For those of you too young to remember, this is exactly what mumyung was doing around 7-6 years ago. So I guess we'll be seeing you next season, eh Rock?

Rock Rock Rock. What are you doing. After watching you go 0-3 in your group, I don't think that you have what it takes to get much further than just barely out of your group.

- GHOSTCLAW

Rock, as always, sucks tremendously. I'm sure other people played worse, but Rock is just an insult to pro gaming.

- Triangle

The 'Boxer' Creativity/Inspiration Award -- fantasy

While this award is technically won by fantasy, its hard to deny that the mastermind behind this build is without doubt iloveoov. Even in his retirement he managed to cause a commotion in the progaming scene through proposing a entirely different take on the royal matchup - TvZ. The planning and execution of this build was amazing and will be remembered as one of the defining moments of Incuit OSL.

Fantasy: his mech build against ggplay was insane, and inspired a bunch of other progamers to try to copy the exactly same strategy (who haven't had as much success). Fantasy showed good planning, and Brilliant execution.

- GHOSTCLAW

The 'Chojja' Missing in Action Award -- July

When you place July in a group with two Protoss, one of which is Much, you expect him to come out of the group 2-1. However, July managed to disappoint everyone by losing to Much in a shameful fashion and then losing to Bisu when he really shouldn't have. Overall July went 1-3 - a disappointing result for a famed ZvP specialist and Golden Mouse winner.

Oh my little Park Sung Jun. All the mind games and muta micro in the world couldn't have saved this sinking ship. I love July so much that I think it might be unhealthy. But winning four OSL titles is a stretch and back to back titles wasn't possible. With that being said he played terribly against two Protoss players which he could have dominated. JulyZerg failed to perform as a reigning OSL champion, and he did so in truly epic fashion.

- SpiralArchitect

The 'Sync' One Hit Wonder Award -- fantasy

I have no idea what you TeamLiquidians are thinking, but you voted fantasy as the player who is going to drop out in the group stage next OSL. For a player with incredibly sharp TvT and TvP and a brilliant coach like Oov its hard to fathom why he is in this position. But I suppose any rookie who manages to "fluke" an OSL final isn't OSL material and I suppose it's up to fantasy to prove that this season was no fluke.

My gut says it gonna be Fantasy, next OSL hell get a one way trip out of the ro16 and he is never coming back.

- samachking

The 'Bifrost' Map of the Tournament Award -- Medusa

Medusa provides a refreshing take on the macro map concept. The map draws many inspirations from Luna - such as the wide open center - but also retains a very distinct style. The back entrance, which is reminiscent of Bifrost, has provided some of the most interesting builds all tournament, as well as providing an interesting focal feature on the map. The games on this map have also been on the highest quality and has been used in all three leagues. This truly was the greatest map of the entire tournament.

This map has seen every side of the game this OSL. From Flashs' epic cheese against Bisu to the innovative mech build Fantasy created on the map. I wish this map had caught on in the foreign community more than it did, it really leads to some very interesting games on any level. Medusa deserves this award if only for its resemblance to the namesake. It will go down in history as one of the best maps of 2008.

- SpiralArchitect

Game of the Tournament -- Stork vs fantasy Game 5

Much like Boxer vs Anytime, the final deciding set between these two titans was always going to be a classic no matter how badly it was played. This map had too much attached to it to be a failure. This was the deciding game of the entire tournament, and is the only game worth the illustrious "Game of the Tournament" award.

Stork vs Fantasy, Game 5. It had everything - the Legend of the Fall; the Royal Road; Stork's third try at the elusive gold; the SKT all-kill; Stork's utter dominance in the first two games; fantasy's dramatic comeback; the greatest mental pressure Stork has ever faced as a professional player; and the absolute cool Stork proceeded to demonstrate en route to a convincing win. Stork transformed himself in the course of the series, and he has now finally cemented his status as one of the greatest Protoss players of all time.

- GrandInquisitor

The 'WTF!' Moment of the Tournament Award -- GGPlay vs Flash Game 3

At Blizzcon, myself and semioldguy both agreed upon the fact that if GGPlay was going to win against Flash he needed to win it 2-0, there was no hope for him on Plasma. As the game unfolded it seemed like GGPlay's chances were running thin - and then something unexplainable happened. Somehow GGPlay came back and defeated one of the most formidable Terran users of today. Words cannot explain the dumbfounded looks upon our faces as we saw Flash tap out, it was dreamlike.

Flash vs. GGPlay Game 3: You could see it in Flash's eyes - It seemed so surreal. It was as if didn't come to reality for him, or anyone else, that he had actually fallen until he typed 'gg' that final time.

- Mikilatov

Player Most Likely to Win the Next Starleague -- BeSt

BeSt remains the best mechanical player in all of Brood War. He has rock solid mechanics but is severely lacking in the mental game - a sign that BeSt grew up too fast. With two educational losses to July and Stork he seems better prepared than ever to take home a title.

I’m going to say Best. He’s so close to upping his game just one level. He has micro, he has macro, and he can be downright scary dominant when he’s in the groove. He needs to make sure he doesn’t become another also ran, someone who we forget in a few seasons as someone who “never made it”.

- GHOSTCLAW

A Word of ThanksLet me just start of by saying that this post would not have been possible without the help of GrandInquisitor and DJEtterStyle; the past couple weeks have been pretty crazy and these guys stepped in and helped out a great deal. But GrandInquisitor deserves so much more thanks than that. For the 12431515th consecutive season, he has maintained the OSL R&S thread. This is perhaps the most useful document on all of TL when it comes to keeping up to date with OSL results. I know that maintaining those things is a real hassle, so my sincere gratitude goes out to you GI. Many thanks.

I also have to thank my partner in crime this season; semioldguy. He's pulled his weight and together we've managed to put on a 'satisfactory' season of OSL reports. Whatever happens in the future, thanks for all your help this season and it is very much appreciated. On that note I also have to give a huge thanks to my graphics slaves; SilverskY and zXk3. Without these two guys your OSL reports would looks bland, boring and largely unappealing. I'm sure everyone appreciates a flash of color every now and then between walls of text; and these guys are responsible for that. Many thanks guys.

Lastly, thanks to all the TL members out there. It's you guys who make this site what it is. There has been a recent influx of brilliant articles - a sign that TL is alive and well. Your contributions to any and every facet of the site is not only appreciated, but necessary for the site to provide the very best. Features like the OSL awards are only possible through the contributions of our beloved forum goers - so thanks to all you guys as well. And that brings us to the end of the Incruit OSL. It's been my pleasure to report this season, and maybe I'll be back for the next one! In the meantime, enjoy the MSL and GOM and a host of TL features coming up in the near future!

Fantastic article, read from beginning to end. God the memory of watching this series and the whole tournament is still alive and well in my head. This has truly been the best OSL for me since Savior's win. The epicness of that bo5 can not be described by words. The magnitude of both players emotions and state of mind before, during, and after the final is only barely perceivable to anyone but themselves. Very derserved win by Stork, the SKT all-kill, Stork: the best protoss player in sc history.

Great article, and a very nice battle report. The finals were amazing to watch live (probably the first match I've watched live in over a year), and reliving it in the battle reports was great. I also agree with all the OSL awards